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EFF Urges US Copyright Office To Reject Proactive 'Piracy' Filters (torrentfreak.com)
TorrentFreak: As entertainment companies and Internet services spar over the boundaries of copyright law, the EFF is urging the US Copyright Office to keep "copyright's safe harbors safe." In a petition just filed with the office, the EFF warns that innovation will be stymied if Congress goes ahead with a plan to introduce proactive 'piracy' filters at the expense of the DMCA's current safe harbor provisions. [...] "Major media and entertainment companies and their surrogates want Congress to replace today's DMCA with a new law that would require websites and Internet services to use automated filtering to enforce copyrights. "Systems like these, no matter how sophisticated, cannot accurately determine the copyright status of a work, nor whether a use is licensed, a fair use, or otherwise non-infringing. Simply put, automated filters censor lawful and important speech," the EFF warns.
I'm trying to figure out whether you are joking or not. I'm going to assume you're not. Intent to commit murder is not a crime. It's necessary to prove first degree murder, but treating "intent" to do something as a crime is a common distopian sci-fi theme, not a current reality (Minority Report, Orwell's Thoughtcrimes, etc). Were you thinking of conspiracy to commit murder? That's different and requires someone to have actually committed crimes before prosecution. Also, this is a horribly comparison. A more apt comparison is if the judge at a murder trial were a super-powerful toaster that could recognize when something looked like murder, but couldn't tell the difference between murder, actors reenacting a murder, and a subway worker making me a sandwich (admittedly, sometimes it does seem like they murdered my sandwich, but that's neither here nor there). Since it can't tell the difference, it gives all three the death sentence.
I assume that such filters will be computer generated with little to no human review. The article specially mentions ContentID. Given the number of bogus DCMA takedowns that Yahoo receives each day due to these substandard checks, I don't see this being much better.
This could cause a stifling effect upon fair use.
Simply put, automated filters censor lawful and important speech
Collateral damage due to protecting copyrights. The media companies that are encouraging DMCA get replaced don't care about this. They just want their material protected. Hell, they probably would very much like 'fair use' to go away. Anything to tighten the screws, damn the legitimate usages!
This is a very American response to the issue: Shoot first, ask questions later. Automated filters are basically this mentality encoded. Censor first, ask questions later. Protect copyrights first, ask questions later.
Why the hell is it that values that Americans seems to cherish are left at the entrance when they go to work? Fucking disgraceful.